While the United States maintains the strongest military around, it faces extreme challenges around the world ranging from cantankerous state actors to borderless/non state opponents. Henry Kissinger recently noted “Never before has it been necessary to conduct a war with neither front lines nor geographic definition and, at the same time, to rebuild fundamental principles of world order.” In space, the threats that our satellites were designed to see and sense, ICBM fields, electronic emissions, and infrared signatures, are evolving and becoming tougher to capture. No longer is the target an enemy armored Division or a fixed weapons site. Instead, the new target sets are what the military calls time critical or fleeting targets. Unlike traditional targets, these fleeting targets--terrorists, insurgents, weapons traffickers—are not suited to detection from space. Dr. Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute points out that U.S. intelligence has characterized the signatures for traditional fleeting targets such as mobile Surface to Air Missiles or SCUD short range missile launchers. But, the new breed of fleeting targets seldom exhibit predictable patterns, are extremely deceptive in nature, and do not use equipment that emits a significant trackable signature. The technical challenge of collecting these signatures from space is made extremely difficult by the simple laws of proximity. Since radio frequency emissions fade as a square of distance from the source, collection of very low power signatures from orbital distances of 120 miles to 22,000 miles becomes nearly impossible.

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Henderson, Scott A. The Third Battle: Is the U.S. Ready to Wage the Next Conflict in Space?. Maxwell AFB, AL: USAF Air University, March 2004. [ 7 quotes ] [ page 27-8 ]